INTERVENTION 2

 

Owen Roberts

March 22, 2022

New Jersey City Univ.

Art 263

Intervention 2 Project

 

         The wearable piece of art that I chose that acts as a form of protest art and represents activism was a hoodie that I purchased from an underground clothing brand called Barriersworldwide.com. The hoodie stands out in forms of Activism due to the important people that are stitched onto the hoodie and what they represent. In the front are two portraits of Marcus Garvey and Frederick Douglas. Next, on the left sleeve is a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., and on the right sleeve is a portrait of Malcolm X.  

 

    Marcus Garvey (August 17, 1887- June 10, 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. Marcus Garvey was also the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. Garvey played a big role in fighting for the independence and rights for Black people in his time. He founded the UNIA in 1914 in Jamaica and moved to the United States (Harlem, NY) to branch off and expand. Over his years he played a big role in leading and contributing to Black activist groups to help fight for equal rights and freedom for Black people in America. He worked with the famous Black Panther Party in the early 1900s and also launched various business in the US like the Negro Factories Corporation and the Negro World Newspaper.

 

     Frederick Douglass (February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an African American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesmen. He escaped from slavery in Maryland in the early 1800s and after he escaped, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York and became well known for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Douglass also became well known for his three books one autobiography on his life as a slave called ‘’the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave’’ (1845), ‘’My bondage and my Freedom’’ (1855), and ‘’Life and Times of Frederick Douglass’’ (1881).

Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – Feb 21, 1965) was a African American Muslim minister and Human Rights activist who was a prominent figure during the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X also was a spokesperson for the nation of Islam until 1964 and played as a vocal advocate for black empowerment and the promotion Of Islam within the black community.

Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15^th 1929 – April 4^th 1968) was an American Baptist minister and Activist who became the most visible and one of the most important spokesman and leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in 1955.

 

 

This clothing piece not only sheds light on the importance of these people and their roles for the fight for Black rights but gives an outlet in fashion to express people’s feelings and knowledge towards Black activism and the movement. These four activists fought hard for our chance at equal rights and spread the message to not ever be afraid of struggles of racism and segregation our society lives under, spreading that same message as the one quote in the Siegler reading ‘’Two acts of defiance, nearly fifty years apart, deliver the same message: I refuse to be afraid’’ (Chapter 10).